I'll appreciate if someone can guide me to convert the aspect ratio of a couple of MPEG-2 files.

Files are encoded in a 4:3 ratio and I want to transform them to 16:9 ratio.

I know that the picture will be distorted, but that's intended. Don't want to crop, or trim any piece of the actual video; and, will prefer the method that uses no re-compresion at all, if possible, or minimal re-compression instead. Maybe someway to fool the player and make it to "see" a 16:9 video.

I don't consider myself a newbie neither an expert in using TMPEGenc, but I just can't find the way to do it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The output aspect ratio is determined by a simple "flag" (value) in the MPEG stream. I don't know any way to change it in TMPGEnc without recompressing, but I suspect there are some MPEG "toolkits" that will let you do it. It should also be possible to open the file with a hexadecimal editor and change only that flag, assuming you knew the address and the correct value.

BTW, I think the value is 0x31 for 16:9 and 0x21 for 4:3, but I don't know exactly how to determine the address. If someone has more information, or knows of a program that will change this flag automatically, please post.

Not only can change the aspect ratio flag, but some others flags that i really don't undestand clearly. Anyway, i've tried it and got a 16:9 video file with the very same file size. So I guess it works.

It says it doesn't re-encode anything... but Is there an EASY way to confirm if my video have been re-encoded or would be a lose of time to even try (as the resulting video is the same size)?

How long does this program take to process the file? If it's very slow, it's possible it re-encoded the file (although I doubt that very much). If it's fast, you can be pretty much certain it didn't re-encode anything.

I just went through the sourec code for pulldown (found at http://www.inwards.com/inwards/?id=36 ). It is safe to say that Pulldown does not re-encode the source independent of any option supplied to the program. It simply changes certain bits in the source before copying to the desired output.